Business used to be my favourite subject but after today I’d happily die without seeing it again! I was so confident that this was my A1 subject, the one that would definitely get me a place in college…yeah that didn’t exactly go to plan.

The short questions were ok, I attempted all of them. The ABQ was weird! There was none of those questions about entrepreneurial skills/characteristics or how Mary could survive against the economic downturn which kinda threw me. The long questions were sick! Q1, part a, scared the crap outta me so I moved onto Q3, which was only ever meant to be my back up question but ended up being my only question in part one.

The last 3 questions 4, 5 and 7 were horrible. I had an hour to do them all in which meant..STRESS!!! All in all I did a pretty crap paper, which I really wasn’t expecting! But the worse is still to come with french and history all day tomorrow!

History is probably the most awful paper ever, simply for the fact that predictions are useless because literally anything can come up. So, the plan is an all nighter tonight and study as much as I can of history and do a bit of french in the morning. Fingers crossed anyway!

Hope everyone’s getting on well!

I’m sure all of you would agree with me if i were to say that our first week of exams was, while I wouldn’t go so far as to call it easy, certainly a lot less difficult than it was made out to be. After the urgent, incessant cramming we all went through, The Leaving Cert: Week One might even have been a bit of a relief to some. Well todays message was: THIS is where the going gets tough.

The first week began on a high with one of the easiest English paper ones ever seen. On the Thursday, though a lot of us were hoping for Boland/Longley(whose absenses from paper two sparked several humourous facebook groups), English paper two was still undeniably quite do able. Then on the Friday it was just maths paper one and then the weekend, unless you’re a geography student as i am. Even allowing for the fact that friday was a full day for us geography students, the actual paper itself was so simple that it hardly comes into account. So we all had a pleasant weekend, thinking that this leaving cert thing wasnt half as bad as it was made out to be. Think again.

Monday morning at nine thirty we sat in the exam hall, sitting back in our seats, relaxed into a false sense of security by the walkover of a week just gone. Maths paper two was handed out. Section A, seven long questions choose five. Section B, four long questions choose one. Bam. The gentle start was most certainly over.

Two and a half hours later we were given ninety minutes to recuperate, before being thrown into a world of Irish stories, letters and quotes. Two comprehensions, five questions on each worth ten marks. Story and letter, sixty marks each. Asked for at least three quarters of an A4 page for both the story and letter, but expected to do far more.

After just half a hours break(or only ten minutes break if you do honours Irish!!) we were given our third exam of the day; The Irish Aural. This went on for fourty minutes, with some of the most confusing accents known to man. It was generally do able, but some of the speakers(especially the last one) might have been sean nós singing their lines for all i knew.

Finally, we were allowed to stumble home to prepare for irish paper two, starting 9:30am sharp tomorrow morning. We are well and truly into it now.

Best of luck with the nightmare of exams to come, John.

I’m kind of dissapointed in myself for dropping down to pass Irish this morning. It was dead easy and i was finished 40 minutes into the exam…dreadful or what? But I mean I don’t need honours irish so it would have been a huge work load on me and a waste..overall a great paper!

I ended up doing the essay on someone you like and the letter…the comprehensions were great aswel. obviously after doing honours for two years it seemed extremely easy for me..espesh the listening exam..I hope tomorrow’s Irish will be just as easy.

Maths was epic. Ordinary level too but epic. I might have just aced it!

Good luck for tomorrow!!!

Bonne chance mes amis!! -Ally

9.30am – 5.10pm must be someone in the SEC’s sick idea of a joke. I’m exhausted!
However, I am buoyed by the fact that: a) I never have to do maths again and b) I never have to hear that really annoying Ulster-Irish fella on an aural again!

Overall, honours maths was ok-ish. I’m hopeful I might have managed to scrape a bit more than last year’s D3, anyway. Paper one was quite nice, but I didn’t think it was the “seriously easy” exam some people were calling it. Paper two this morning went far better than I thought it would. I was in such a panic about it last night, but I managed to have a go at most of the questions so there should be some attempt marks anyway! Question two on vectors was lovely, but to be frank I couldn’t barely READ the option question (Q8), let alone do what it asked! Ah well, no more Maclaurin series for me either way!

Irish paper one wasn’t horrendous, but it wasn’t the lovely paper I wanted it to be. I wasn’t impressed by the essays at all! How many people in the country would be able to write about Ireland’s future in the EU in English let alone as Gaeilge?! Why bother putting an essay hardly anyone is going to do on the exam?
The first comprehension was tricky enough, but good old Ted Kennedy’s one seemed straight forward enough.
As for the aural, it went fine, but once again I can’t express my joy at never having to hear from “Seán” or whatever his name is again! I was secretly glad he didn’t get to go to Oxegen..

Good old Irish paper two is tomorrow, so I’d better go cram some of the ridiculousness that is “Stair na Gaeilge”. Cad is fiú é?! Then it’s French on Wednesday. French the day after Irish, I’m telling you, whoever makes the exam timetable has a twisted sense of humour!

Good luck!

I Apologise for not blogging these days, its totally slipped my mind. I banned myself from the internet for a while beacuse i was spending too much time on facebook,,.or should i say wasting time.

Anyways,

Since i dont do English or Irish this year

Math Paper 1 was good as i thought it couldbe, some iffy parts.Math paper2, What was going on with Question 4? Probability questions were good, loved the fact that the differnce equation proof came up though Vectors were good too..Did all 7 questions since the trig question was horrible :O I’l just hope for myB3..Business tomoro, im screwed basically! off to learn/ revise short Questions

Goodluck in the rest of your exams (: xx

Firstly, I am very sorry I haven’t been on and didn’t wish everyone good luck – it’s only cause I know that every one of you is/was fine =P

Let’s start from English paper 1 so!! I thought it was a nice paper, but found some of the comprehension questions took ages to answer properly. I answered on the Heaney interview, and got a little carried away! For the question B, I wrote the radio talk-thing about the importance of books… I really enjoyed writing it because I just wrote about Narnia and imagination! I even got to stick in “Once a King or Queen of Narnia, always a King or Queen of Narnia.”

My essay writing was a tad disastrous though! I started on the last topic – the short story where two eccentric characters meet. Then it got a little complicated, which I only realised after reading back over my first page and a half! Ever had ideas that made perfect sense in your head, but on paper it just looks like a crazy jumble of nonsense?? Well that’s what my examiner would have been subjected to had I not changed!! So I wrote a personal essay on freedom in an hour =/

I was a bit more organised (or so I thought) for paper two and stuck rigidly to my timing, even though I had an overwhelming urge to throw my Yeats essay in the bin half way through and try Rich. The thing is, I knew my Rich essay better and have no idea why I chose Yeats!! My Rich essay had gotten an amazing (albeit inflated) 93%, my Yeats 86%. Now I won’t be complaining if I get handed that in August, but that is doubtful! I really would have loved to have seen Longley on that paper but there is no way anyone should have only learned Boland. What if she HAD been on, but with a horrible question?? Although there is no excuse for people to be gloating about it!

To all you out there who think it’s funny to post things like “HAHA I TOLD YOU BOLAND WASNT COMIN UP!!!” I hope Karma comes and bites you in the ass.

I loved both the comparative and Lear questions. I did GV & V and the question suited my texts (Sive, Billy Elliot, The Story of Lucy Gault) perfectly. I’m not usually very good on the auld Lear questions, but this one went ok; I just hope the examiner agrees!!

Maths (OL) was mostly ok. I dropped from honours because it was taking up so much of my time, in December. There were a few tricky part Cs and, embarrassingly, I forgot the compound interest formula but then found it in the log tables!!

I was pretty happy with how it’s been going until I started to think this morning…. I don’t think I’ve done enough and that thought is killing me! I need about 550 for medicine and I just can’t see it coming =( Oh well sure I can only do my best – problem is I’m not sure that’s what I’ve been doing =S

Best of luck for the week ahead =D Its gonna be a little bit like hell I think!!
Irish Paper 2 gives me nightmares so I would hate to have another exam that day too.

To all you out there doing Irish and Business – God love yis!!!

Ta ta

Katie

I’ve done every question from every year back to 1996, but today marks the easiest paper in the 15 years of the course. Reading through the paper at the start, I honestly had to check the front to see if the OL paper had been given to me, but no. The 14% that did take the paper could only have been happy, bar the integration Q, they all looked fairly palatable.

Q1, sequences&series bit probably threw people, but the part B? How that deserves 20 marks is beyond me.

Q2, C(i), again, unbelievably simple, part (ii) may have thrown a few, but very easy to get marks in.

Q3, B(ii) was odd, but just an Argand diagram, straight-forward once you figure that odd. Odd in part C too, with the roots coming in decimal form, never seen it before, but it worked out all the same.

Q4, Easy a and b, induction and algebra for part C, with a sum of numbers squared. Sneaky sneaky people though, the “r=11″ bit on the bottom would have been easily missed by people.

q5, induction, logs and binomial, c(ii) was about the only challenge on the paper.

Q6 and 7, easiest differentiation questions yet, nothing odd bar Q6B(ii) where the “curve” is actually a line.

Didn’t touch integration, horrible looking part c involving logs and trig functions, but other than that, paper 1 was a breeze.
Did everyone else find it that easy? Talking to the rest of the lads after, the feeling was mutual.
Paper 2 has to be impossible, otherwise there’s going to be a ridiculous amount of As given out. It really can’t be as easy as paper 1.

Week 1 over, 3 down, 7 to go.

This will be a short post. Simply because its just maths paper 1,,,ordinary level.

I thought the paper as a whole was grand,much easier than i thought it would be,,the last part in Q8 caught me though…had no idea how to solve it!

Paper 2 will hopefully be alright too.,,new log tables are great! ha..

overall,a good start to the exams i think,first a great english paper and now a grand maths paper…i dont do geography bu my friends who did it said it was fine,,easy short answer questions..!! Have a good weekend and get some studying in there too!

P.S. i salute all those heroes who sat an honours maths paper….good on you…your all geniuses!!!!

bonne chance!!

-Ally

sorry for double posting..i hate doing that:(

wow,so this thing really blew up in the last few days so i thought id post!

Poetry:What can i say? last night i was giving out to myself ,,,”Ally,,what’s wrong with you? you know that Boland is most likely gonna come up so go study her NOW!!!”. but the fact is I hate boland..just don’t get me started. I decided to go against my conscience and quickly go over Kavanagh, Rich and Eliot; my favourite poets. I had a great answer prepared for Eliot so ended up doing him. I think im the only one im my class who did Eliot…i love him !!! Id say i got full marks in that question because it  was jsut perfect..the first thing i did was flick to the poetry section in the exam…it was just such a great feeling,,i think i was smiling for the first half hour in the exam!! I liked the unseen poem too,it was easy enough.

Lear: I did the question (i) loyalty triumphs over viciousness or whatever. It was good, i was happy with my answer. No more Lear is kind of sad. I’m gonna miss learning all those quotes and phrases that sound intelligent! (okay sorry no I’m not *slaps self*)

Comparative: Emm…it was okay,probably the one i was least happy with. I did G.V.V. part (i). It wasn’t up to my usual standard so we shall see!

All in all,i couldn’t be more happy with the English paper,thank God all my poets came up!!! I would be raging if i had spent my last minutes learning Boland,,in the end Eliot saved me I love that guy! Tomorrow maths awaits,,ordinary level that is…so it’ll be fine i suspect!

Bonne Chance mes amis!!!!!

-Ally…

First of all, hi Mog, it’s not me!

More importantly, what was up with English Paper 2? Yeats, Rich, Elliot and Kavanagh, I don’t even think God saw that one coming. Like half the country, I was praying for Longley and Boland. Ever since the Paper 1 mix up last year, I knew I would do Longley on the day, surely he had to come up? Failing that, Boland was a dead cert, seemingly. At 1:59, I could hear a faint Longley chant starting. You may now open your papers. F*@#. Plenty of gasps around the room. So I checked out my other options. We never studied Elliot in class, I decided last night that in fact I hate Yeats, so that left me with Rich or Kavanagh. Rich’s feministic views are quite insightful and inspiring….lol jk, I’m a man! So it was just me and Kavanagh. Some how I managed to remember my sample answer from Easter, and in fairness the question was okish. Elsewhere, things went from bad to worse with the comparative. Seeing as we ignored Vision and Viewpoint in class(not so clever now), literary genre was my option. Generally with it, you just go in and transcribe eight pages of pre-learned stuff and maybe refer to the question here and there. But not this year. This year you actually has to think about it. How does the “unexpected” add to good story-telling. How the hell can you do that when comparing under the headings of how the story is told and setting? Yuck.
Lear however was fine. I thought this was the only one with potential to be bad before going in, but no. Turns out we did the exact question in class last month on why the bad characters excite us more than the good ones. Quotes glaore, happy out.

Paper one was fine, Heaney comprehension, hopes for 2050 and the optimism speech, lovely. Quoted Einstein three times and finished on “Never regard study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs” by him. Sorted. 28 A4 pages and half a pen later, the first one was ok.
Maths tomorrow. There’s more riding on this than anything else. No pressure though, paper 2 isn’t until Monday! Hope it’s going well for everyone else!

Cillian